In Coaching the Artist Within, creativity expert Eric Maisel discusses the mental energy required to create. Unlike physical energy which is based on food/sleep inputs, mental energy depends on your interest, passion, desire, concern – the intensity you apply to creating. Your mental energy is depleted by mental activity, including creating – and not creating! […]
For the next few weeks I am playing Wreck this Journal on the interwebz. I gather it might be fun, maybe interesting, maybe even a bit reckless. Dunno about that, how much trouble can you get into with a paperback book? Anyhoo. You are welcome to play! All you need is a copy of the […]
Although he has devoted a lot of time and energy to studying, writing about and coaching creative people, Eric Maisel’s life work, in my estimation, is all about helping people learn the skill he terms “passionately making meaning” – or living according to their stated life purpose. He explains how to develop your own statement […]
Throughout The Artist’s Way, Julia Cameron stresses how blocked creatives tend to be stuck in our own heads, and how the antidote to blocking is to take action. To keep moving, to embody the spirit of “Create or Die” is a strong statement, but I think it is true for creative people. There is an […]
Julia Cameron urges us to devise a personal creative haven, complete with an altar to our creativity, plus creativity rituals. This “safe zone” offers a tangible physical connection to our creativity and rituals keep us spiritually centered, grounded, palpably linked to our creativity. It is important to note that the full title for Julia Cameron’s […]
Each time I’ve come through The Artist’s Way Chapter 8, I find myself on the verge of precisely what author Julia Cameron addresses in Chapter 9: making a dastardly Creative U-Turn. It’s likely you’ll find yourself in the same risky situation because it’s not unusual! The Artist’s Way Process The ninth chapter of this powerful […]
Estee Lauder said, “First comes the shy wish. Then you must have the heart to have the dream. Then, you work. And work.” A similar thing could be said about the creative process. You might have an initial inspiration, a spark, an idea, a feeling. But to bring that creativity to life, you must take […]
According to Julia Cameron, many creative people spend years mislabeling themselves. When we do not create the way we think we should, we label ourselves lazy when in fact we are blocked by fear. The way past fear, asserts Cameron, is through love for your inner artist. Your inner artist is like a child in […]
According to Julia Cameron, we need to take the pain of artistic losses or failures and ask: “How does this loss serve me? Where does it point my work?” What if you could turn that pain into creative energy to recover and keep moving forward? What if you could use a painful creative loss to […]
In good times as well as in bad, our beliefs about money can restrain our creativity. Do you, like many creative types, feel it is inevitable to be struggling and broke because we want to be an artist, actor, writer, musician, fill in the blank instead of working at a “real” job? Do you think […]